One hundred sixty seven years ago, on this day, May 26th, 1859, a paper by the Anglo-Irish scientist, John Tyndall, landed on someone’s desk at the Royal Society…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly zzzppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that this is the 19th century. Science is going gangbusters.
The specific context was that you have an Anglo Irish scientist who may or may have not lifted work from Eunice Foote. We’ll never know.
It’s not clear to me that he did, because she didn’t complain, and her allies didn’t complain, and other people who will have read her work at the time didn’t say, hey, “Tyndall’s nicking stuff.” That last point is not a slam dunk argument, of course, because you wouldn’t accuse an esteemed scientist of plagiarism or filching work, because it would not be gentlemanly, especially if he’s only if he’s pinching it from someone who is, after all, only a woman.
What I think we can learn from this. Oh, here we are, with the CO2 levels
What happened next. Tyndall died in 1893, accidentally killed by his wife just before Svante Arrhenius did his calculations, which took him a year, and produced his famous article about “carbonic acid.”
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Forty eight years ago, on this day, May 26th, 1977, The Grand Island Independent (Nebraska) runs a a story on p34, “Forest Loss Poses threat to Earth”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 333ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that by the mid-1970s various types of scientists were beginning to look at atmospheric carbon dioxide build-up and go ‘uh oh’. There was a side debate about whether the carbon dioxide problem was down to fossil fuels or fossil fuels and other issues (deforestation).
What I think we can learn from this is that we have had fifty years of this stuff. And we just keep making things worse. Because we are not that smart. And we think we can dump the costs on other people/species.
What happened next. We dumped the costs on other generations, until it was us.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The eighth edition of the CO2 Newsletter, (Vol. 2, no. 2), published bi-monthly by American geologist William N. Barbat between 1979 and 1982, is now up. You can download a pdf and see the full text here.
The eight page issue has a front page story pointing out that “Polar Ice Caps: ‘Sword of Damocles’ to a Warming World.” The sword of Damocles is a Greek myth, where a sword, aimed at Damocles’ throat, is suspended by a very thin (and getting thinner) thread. It’s means a massive danger that might happen at any time. Like, er, now.
And here is the first two paragraphs
While the debate continues whether a warmer world climate will be better or worse on the whole, the anticipated destruction of glacial ice which is now perched above sea level can only bring a worldwide loss of coastal land areas.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is considered to be the most vulnerable to a warming of the oceans and atmosphere in polar regions because the large ice streams which are grounded far below sea level are protected and buttressed by ice shelves whose temperatures are not far below freezing in summer.
The rest of the issue is the usual (as in superlative) mix of editorial, excerpts from recent reports and also a piece on hard versus soft energy paths.
Please do share these newsletters. They are horrifying indictments of our species’ inability to organise itself to respond to clear and present threats. Oh well, here we are fifty years later, at the beginning of the Fafocene.
“If you genuinely tell people that building a wind farm here will save the planet from climate change you are doing a massive disservice to the environment. It is an atrocious misleading of the Australian community.”
Ian Campbell, Senate Estimates ECITA Committee, 25 May 2006, p.116.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 3xxppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that by this time, the Howard Government was beginning to look clapped out and tired. The first couple of environment ministers who had been intelligent and slick had been replaced by someone who was maybe not in their league, and he was starting to look idiotic, as was the government.
The specific context was that by this time, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Westpac and other organisations had released their “business case for early (sic) action on climate change.” The Millennium drought was ongoing. There was going to be an UNFCCC negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which Australia still hadn’t ratified. Mostly though, Prime Minister John Howard was just beginning to look like he wasn’t quite on top of things. There was a technology deal with the United States and Korea, the AP6, but it wasn’t really convincing people, and there was clearly going to be trouble ahead on climate and environment generally.
What I think we can learn from this. Governments get tired, and the good ministers burn out, or flame out, and they are replaced by second or third rate is and then you go into a death spiral.
What happened next. Howard lost the 2007 election, and incoming Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd deployed all of his considerable skill, humility and tact to usher Australia into a wonderful climate politics where sharp emissions reductions were combined with a realistic adaptation policy and… oh, come on. You know what happened.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Evans, has thrown doubt over a long-standing Federal Government position on greenhouse gases in a move which will alarm the business sector.
The doubts on Australia’s response to the UN Climate Change Convention were compounded by Senator Evans’ admission that Australia had recently been “rolled” on its tough stand on the Basel convention on hazardous wastes.
At a Senate Estimates Committee hearing on Tuesday [24th May], Victorian Liberal Senator Judith Troeth asked: “Has Cabinet agreed that Australia will not implement measures under the climate change convention which would damage our competitiveness, unless other countries also do so?”
Gill, P. 1994. Minister signals change of policy on greenhouse gas. The Australian Financial Review, 26 May, p.6.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 313ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the Australian Government had, initially, in 1989 made the right noises about a climate treaty, but by 1992 opposition within the Labor government had hardened. Although Australia signed up and ratified the UNFCCC, it also started looking for loopholes to avoid any real commitments. The specific context was that this is before the treaty became international law. They knew that that was coming, and they knew that there would be a Conference of the Parties, and they wanted to start getting their retaliation in first.
What I think we can learn from this. This is not “the bad guys.” This is not the evil cloven hooves, tail with a triangle on the end, horns on head Howard Government (boo, hiss!). This is that nice, cuddly, social democratic government led by Paul Keating. It’s important to remember this.
What happened next. Most of the political elite and industry fought tooth and nail against a domestic carbon tax, which would have been the thing to keep the international climate negotiations sweet. And they sent the Environment Minister, John Faulkner, to the Berlin COP without much more than promises to maybe take action at some point. There was a National Greenhouse Response Strategy by this time, but it was farcical. No one took it seriously. Ultimately then, once the next government came in, they stopped even pretending to give a shit about the UNFCCC, and played hardball, which is why they got the incredibly generous deal at Kyoto (which they still didn’t ratify). I could go on for hours.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The “Stop the Chop” rally last night on the steps of Parliament House, on North Terrace, was at least as large as the one nine days earlier, before 585 trees got chopped down.
I have no doubt that many (most) who attended went feeling happy, energized (though how long that persists, we will come back to). Me, I came away with a very different set of emotions, ranging roughly from despondency to despair (I have learned not to bother, in these instances, with anger (1)).
The song remained, as I thought it would, very much the same. I wrote this (DO Mourn, then Organise) about the dangers in not facing up to facts about where things were at, and I don’t intend to recap at any length. The blog quotes Baldwin and Chomsky and is – but I would say this – worth your time.
Instead, I am going to talk about the likely consequences of this missed opportunity to engage people in granular involvement, rather than ‘mass’ engagement.
And I am going to introduce, of course, yet another made up word – this time, an adjective.
[FWIW – I am grappling with ideas about how we think about (collective) emotions in “social movements” and I’d be very happy to hear from people who are thinking about this too, whether they agree or disagree. I will not engage with trolls, or with smug gaslighters who try to tell me that things happened at the rally that didn’t, in fact, happen.]
What happened?
About 2000 people (and around the same number as last time) gathered on the steps of Parliament House. There was a better sound system and they heard various speeches telling them things they already knew.
There was no serious acknowledgement of the emotional toll that losing the battle for 585 trees would have had.
There were no concrete specific actions for people to take beyond “sign a petition” (because apparently “they can’t ignore us” except they have) and to turn up either the following morning at some random thing (too short notice) or else on Saturday June 6th in Victoria Park to tie some yellow ribbons around threatened trees.
There was repeated chanting of ‘stop the chop’ (From a biased psychoanalytic perspective it was as if people were willing the past week not to have happened, pretending it hadn’t. Wanting to disappear into a fugue state.
There was repeated claims that the “movement” was growing. The only evidence adduced for this that I heard was that 47000 people had signed a petition (there was, apparently though, a problem with this petition, because a different one – it was not clear for what – was being set up – and people could sign it on the six clipboards circulating).
This put me very much in mind of that line from Casablanca “You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe in his heart.”
It comes down to what your definition of “movement” is.
If you believe, as Adam Bandt and his colleagues seem to, that a movement is a bunch of people from a Big Organisation, jetting in from their HQ and standing on a stage, offering “hope,” authenticity and validation to ranks of people who are sat mutely in rows, wanting their (begging) bowls filled up, then Friday was another success in a long line of successes.
If you believe, as I and a few (many?) other people do, that a movement is made up of individuals, small groups, large groups, pulling mostly in the same direction, as frenemies, helping each other out, learning from each other, sharing ideas and resources, then Friday night was another catastrophic shit-show/missed opportunity in a world that can’t afford any more missed opportunities.
What was the broader context
The defeat of the “left” and the progressive (NOT the same thing) ecological forces over the last 60 years. The inability to democratize the state and to stop its total (rather than partial) capture by corporate and technocratic interests, especially in response to the public pressure upsurges of the 1960s and 1970s.
There are lots of factors here. One is the ‘professionalisation’ of campaigning groups and ‘Non-governmental organisations’ (NGOs), so that they become captured by middle-class/tertiary-educated people and – crucially – the perspectives of those people. It was fascinating that the “Conservation Council of South Australia” didn’t even bother to send out an email in advance of the rally. They are ducking and covering.
What was the specific context
In 2023 the Malinauskas government passed some absurdly repressive laws (mentioned – and booed – last night) raising the maximum fine for various forms of protest (e.g. trespass) from $750 to $50,000. Well, it worked. As nobody at the rally mentioned, the Australian Energy Producers had just held a conference on North Terrace and bar a few Extinction Rebellion people, nada.
There is a growing sense of loneliness, atomization, despair in the air, and people are quite understandably desperate to congregate with other people who think and feel like them, even if it is only briefly, only futile. It’s apparently ‘better than nothing’.
What do we learn?
Here’s the promised neologisim. Are you ready? Bravadic.
Bravado is the noun – meaning blustering swaggering conduct.
Well, last night felt very much like a display of ‘bravadic hope’, of people gathered, like all the animals of Animal Farm (except the pigs and dogs) to sing ‘Beasts of England’ as a way of soothing themselves. (see here for the Animal Farm quote, and a bonus snark about a terrible student meeting).
Why is this so? It’s partly because (thanks to fifty plus years of losing) we don’t have expectations or norms about how leaders need to nurture actual movement-building techniques in social movement organisations, during campaigns. It’s always possible to rabble (a)rouse, without helping people develop the tools, spaces, language to cope with inevitable setbacks. Instead, we allow a silence to cover (in the short term) those wounds. (I will write more on this soon, and link to it). We come to think of a campaign as a series of Big Events, rather than granular slogs. I coined the term emotacycle for just these purposes. What we are seeing here, I reckon, is the peak of an emotacycle.
What do I think will happen next (NB it’s the future, so wtaf do I know?).
The anger and energy on display over the last week will dissipate. Not among everyone, but among enough people to make a serious difference at the level of a ‘movement’. The Saturday June 6th event will be significantly smaller (harder to get to, people have other responsibilities that don’t impinge on a Weds/Friday evening for an hour, people don’t see the point).
A feeling of ‘well, I’ll get involved again if I have to closer to the time of the Next Big Threat’ will kick in.
The opportunity to do something different, something that actually counts as movement-building, will be (further) squandered.
What needed to happen
There were two thousand people present. I already have written two speeches about what needed to be done. You can read them here and here.
Basically, the expectation needed to be created that those present would not simply go home, but they would get together with people they knew, and think hard about all the things that they could do with existing skills and knowledge, and the other tasks that needed doing, but for which skills and knowledge might be in short supply. People needed to be told that turning up at a rally now and then, supplemented by signing a petition and being chronically online battling trolls in a Facebook group, Is. Not. Enough.
Footnotes
(1) This not because I have become a more mature or calmer person, but because I have at least managed to massage my expectations down down down).
“JPMorgan Chase and Climeworks landmark CDR agreement heralds new standard in voluntary carbon market for direct air capture”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that with the failure to use existing technologies like nuclear and renewables to reduce carbon emissions, we are now in such deep shit that we’re having to invent, and take seriously, fantasy technologies like Direct Air Capture.
The specific context was that direct air capture has been having a “moment” for the last few years. Reality is setting in, but you get these hysterical announcements about market making and investment and you’re supposed to take it seriously. But what we learn is that carbon dioxide removals is the emperor’s new clothes. It’s a farce.
What I think we can learn from this. Any crap gets believed in, if it is convenient. Bearded sky gods, Direct Air Capture, you name it.
What happened next. I haven’t been able to find anything more recent than 2024. Maybe the money is still ‘there’. But, you know these agreements, they last for a couple of years, and then they get quietly dropped, and another agreement comes along.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Federal Cabinet faces a showdown over greenhouse environmental issues after ministers yesterday heard alarming predictions that meeting Australia’s emission targets could significantly cut economic growth and boost fuel prices.
The Minister for the Environment, Senator Robert Hill, and the Minister for Industry, Senator Nick Minchin, both entered Cabinet yesterday armed with new evidence about the extent of Australia’s greenhouse problems.
Economic research commissioned by Senator Minchin found that forcing industry to meet Australia’s targets under the Kyoto international greenhouse agreement could reduce gross national product by up to 1.4 per cent in 2010.
Taylor, L. and Skulley, M. 2000. Cabinet clash on greenhouse. The Australian Financial Review, 24 May, p1.
And
Industry started a strong campaign against the Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill’s, proposed greenhouse trigger yesterday. This follows a fiery Cabinet discussion on Tuesday [23rd] over new greenhouse measures proposed by the Senator.
The Federal Cabinet is understood to have reached a clear understanding on Tuesday that no extra greenhouse requirements should be imposed on the proposed $1billion Kogan Creek power station in Queensland.
It rejected a memo from Senator Hill that the project be forced to invest in greenhouse-abatement projects to offset its own emissions. However, a spokesman for the Environment Minister said the Cabinet had not made a final decision.
2000 Taylor, L. 2000. Industry adds its weight to oppose greenhouse move. The Australian Financial Review, May 25, p.7.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Australian political elites and economic elites had decided to resist climate action. They made this decision not in a smoke-filled room, but sort of collectively in ‘91-92. And they continued to push against any action. Even very moderate action, like a small carbon tax in ‘94-95 set them frothing and foaming at the mouth.
The specific context was that there was pressure on the Minister for the Environment for a so-called greenhouse trigger, so that big developments would get called in for a proper look and more-than-rubber-stamp approval.
What I think we can learn from this. Again, industry wants rubber stamps for their big projects that are going to make the money. They don’t want the politicians “interfering,” and they don’t want the politicians to have power and to have democratic control. This is how the game is played.
What happened next. The trigger was defeated, and greenhouse triggers have been defeated ever since in Australia, which is essentially a quarry with a state attached.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Forty seven years ago, on this day, May 22nd, 1979,
President Carter’s chief scientific adviser Frank Press requests NAS to look at CO2
[following MacDonald and Pomerance] Finally, weeks later, MacDonald called to tell him that Press had taken up the issue. On May 22, Press wrote a letter to the president of the National Academy of Sciences requesting a full assessment of the carbon-dioxide issue. Jule Charney, the father of modern meteorology, would gather the nation’s top oceanographers, atmospheric scientists and climate modelers to judge whether MacDonald’s alarm was justified — whether the world was, in fact, headed to cataclysm.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 3xxppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that from the mid 1970s, various scientists in the United States – we’re talking Gordon MacDonald, Alvin Weinberg, Roger Revelle, perhaps a few others – had been able to lobby the ERDA to start taking climate change seriously and put pressure on the higher-ups in the science establishment in the United States, especially President Carter’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Frank Press. And Press, on this day, asked the National Academy of Sciences to have a look at the issue with new eyes to see if the fears of the carbon dioxide action advocates were fair and justified.
The specific context was that Chief scientists understandably want to make sure a problem they are being told about is actually a problem, before they go to their political pay masters with it. That’s fair and legitimate.
What I think we can learn from this. That for all reasonable circumstances, we knew enough by the late 1970s to be taking action.
What happened next. The NAS did the study. This was the Charney report, and it said, “yeah, if we keep tipping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere there’s absolutely no reason not to believe that the temperature will go up significantly and that will cause a world of pain” and Press clearly didn’t like that, didn’t think it should be something on Carter’s agenda, especially in the following year, which was an election year.
Frank Press died 2020 – a life of magnitude https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004812117
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
When he was unceremoniously dumped by the Labor Party in late 1991, after failing to effectively counter Liberal leader John Hewson’s Fightback! campaign, the level stood at 355ppm.
When he died in 2019, the atmospheric levels stood at 411ppm (they’re now pushing 430ppm). I don’t intend to recap his climate mis-steps (see here) and missed opportunities (I did that already in this Conversation piece: Bob Hawke, the environmental PM, bequeathed a huge ‘what if’ on climate change). Nor do I intend to give a blow-by-blow account of who said what about what to whom tonight (a video was made and is already up – if you’re ‘into’ history, politics etc, it’s definitely worth your time.
What I intend to do is … serve up a few banalities and call it a day.
Banality one is that History is about what gets told and how. It’s also about what doesn’t get told (and how it is not talked about – usually by running out of time/focusing on something else.
Fortunately there wasn’t that much banality on display tonight at the Hawke (!) Centre on North Terrace. The event was to launch/publicise a new book ‘Gold Standard: Remembering the Hawke Government’.
It was ably compered (not facilitated!) by Misha Ketchell of The Conversation, who had managed to tear himself away from The West Wing to serve up a series of more-than-perfunctory soft-ball questions to the three professional historians (and co-editors of the book). These were (drum roll please)
They covered a lot of ground, and wore their deep expertise lightly (this should of course, be the norm among academics, but trust me, it ain’t).
They (especially Holbrook) were good on the way the Hawke government came to loom large as a picture of stability after the 2007-2018 bloodbath of the Prime Ministers. (Fwiw I think the Hawke/Keating era looms large because it was ultimately the death of the Australian Settlement, something discussed at the end of the event by – iirc- Bongiorno).
They (especially Black) were good on the way that the media landscape (mass, social) has transformed out of all sight, and how much more difficult governance is now. There’s a story (not told tonight) of Julia Gillard pointing out that you could offer a huge detailed set of policy statements and the journos would be hungry again hours later. The beast is hungry hungry hungry, and that isn’t helping anyone. (Thomas Mayo covered some of this last week in his Nelson Mandela lecture at the same venue, btw, and it too is well worth your time) – here, inevitably, is my blogpost about that.
What they didn’t cover (at all, or in great depth for my monomania)
So, for me as a former Australian resident and occasional visitor (nearing the end of the latest visitation), a few trends/dilemmas strike me afresh every time I cross the girt sea.
The exquisite vulnerability to climate change (which is being accelerated by the relentless search for fossil fuels for export purposes: The Australian Oil and Gas lobby has just finished its latest trade fair about 200m from the Hawke Centre. It faced only tiny protests, after State Premier Peter Malinauskas unleashed some nice authoritarian anti-protest laws in 2023).
The running sore of a lack of any real reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples (the acknowledgement of country at tonight’s event was pretty cursory, tbh). If October 7th hadn’t sucked all the oxygen out of the room, then the heart-breaking vote against the Voice would have really damaged Australia’s international standing.
The increase in inequality and the visible rise of rough sleeping (which is the merest sliver of the tip of the iceberg of homelessness etc). The ‘cost of living’ crisis is a permacrisis for many. It was not always this bad, at least in Australia…
Not all of this can be sheeted home to Hawke, but Hawke’s record especially on climate, the failure to keep the 1988 promise of a Treaty, and the failures around public housing (alluded to near the end), deserved, in my opinion, a bigger chunk of tonight’s assessment. It’s one thing to say you want to avoid hagiography, it’s another to actually avoid it. That said, this was a very nicely done event, and they did, after all, only have an hour. The closest we got to a discussion of neoliberalism (a word mentioned once or twice, almost in passing, and called ‘economic rationalism’ back in the day – though there are ongoing debates about whether those two are the same thing), was Black talking about ‘civil erosion’ the (global) collapse in trade union membership and so on, and then another mention in the context of too-much hagiography.
At this point Frank Bongiorno gave a shout out to his book about the 1980s, and pointed to a list of failures (of treaty, of public service reforms, of the marketization of services that would be better off under actual public control).
Interviewed long after being booted out of the Prime Ministerial role by her own party (sound familiar?) Margaret Thatcher was asked her greatest achievement. She said… Tony Blair.
Blair learned from Hawke/Keating – the early years of Blair gave me a real sense of déjà vu for the mid-80s, in terms of the way the political battles were fought. But I am a bit of a weirdo perhaps (1).
The economy grows, but the problems, the pile of debris we call progress, also grew. Now, 20 and 35 years after they left the stage, those problems are becoming impossible to ignore…
Footnote
At the bus-stop on the way home (after a fabulous meal at Dino’s, the Greek place at the King William Street end of Hindley Street) we bumped the sixteen-ish year old daughter of a friend. The mum is very smart, as is the daughter. I asked her is she knew who Bob Hawke was. Nope. But then, I don’t think at her age I knew who, say, Arthur Caldwell was. The caravan moves on.
